Still Stitching

I am compulsively stitching away on those small folios of cloth. Each half of the folio is viewed as a page. So I compose some scraps of cloth on one side and then stitch them all into place. Then add more stitching before moving over to the other side. Next I do the same on the slightly larger cloth so I can stitch them back to back.

This photo was taken just before I stitched it to the other one below.

And then after I stitched on a new folio I went back to the patchwork on the left above and stitched some more. It is so thick with layers of cloth that hardly any stitches went through to the other side.

Here is the starting point of the next one.

There is a group that calls itself “Slow Stitching”. I do not know how they do this slowly. Granted my work might (maybe) look better if I was slower but I just keep going to get a section finished as soon as possible and have no idea why. And sometimes the quickness results in having to put another piece of cloth over the really ugly bits and stitching that into place.

Yesterday to slow myself down I undid lengths of the embroidery threads in the pouch and then split them into thinner strand sections…..some with two and some with three. Then I wrapped these into butterflies and placed them dark to light in the pouch. And all that does is let me go faster because I just have to grab one, shake it out, thread it through the needle and keep going.

What I do like is how these small bits feel in the hand. If I made a blanket out of all these scraps and covered myself up, I may not get out of bed.

I haven’t started writing in the journal. I can’t do that while watching crime shows with Lee in the den….but I can sew these folios. And maybe that is why they go so fast…because of the pace of the same stories told with different bad guys running from the same cops.

To write I need dreary days and quiet. Dreary is no problem as we are in a continual state of cloudiness and rain. But quiet? I can only get that in the studio. The studio with holes in the ceiling, books that are crying out to be given away, empty surfaces with nothing exciting started, a suitcase too small to hold all the bits I want to pack for Australia, a space that calls me to return to the tai chi and yoga poses I gave up a year ago because they take concentration and clear headedness.

My computer does not even like that word “headedness”. So since I am not getting much cooperation down here in the studio OR office, I am going back upstairs to watch more bad guys and stitch.

And maybe, just maybe, if I look over and Lee is napping, I will take out the journal and jot something down after I mute the bad guys.